What to Do After Level 45 in AION 2: Endgame Roadmap

Updated 2026-10-20 · Global release (Season 1) · launch-window meta, subject to patches

What to Do After Hitting Level 45 in AION 2 (Endgame Roadmap)

I remember the exact moment I hit level 45. The campaign questline ended, a dozen new icons lit up on my screen, and I thought: ...now what? If that's you, don't panic. This is the exact day-one-to-week-one route I wish someone had handed me. Every number here is current as of October 2026 (global Season 1, level cap 45) — expect tuning as patches land.

First, Understand the Two Numbers That Matter

After 45, leveling is over and gear takes over. Two completely different scores now run your life:

Item Level / Gear Score (the helmet-icon number): the sum of all your equipped gear. It's a door lock. It decides which dungeons the game will even let you queue for.
Combat Power (CP): your actual stats — how hard you hit and how much you survive. This also counts everything outside your bag: skill levels, Stigmas, your Daevanion Board, Arcana cards, Soul Binding rolls, titles, pets and wings.

Don't confuse them. I've seen a 1945 gear-score character pull ~90k Combat Power while a 2096 score character sat at ~80k, because the second player had done zero permanent progression (community-tested example, October 2026). Gear score gets you through the door; Combat Power decides whether you clear the fight. Push both together.

The Moment You Hit 45: You're Around 800 Gear Score

That's normal. I finished the campaign at roughly 800 gear score too. Here's the order I do things on every character now.

Day-One Checklist (Do These in This Order)

Clean up every leftover side quest in your log. Lots of older regional quests pay 50,000–100,000+ Kina each, and enhancement is about to eat a lot of gold. This is your starter bank.
Upgrade your amulet and belt first. Your Revelation Amulet and Noble Belt are permanent slots — they can be tiered up forever and never get replaced. More on why in the enhancement guide.
Evenly enhance your Unique gear to +5, then push toward +10. Every enhancement from +1 to +10 is a 100% success, so there's no gambling yet. Spread upgrades across pieces instead of maxing one. For throwaway leveling Uniques, stop at +5 — that's enough to reach the 1400 gate, and anything more is wasted Kina.
Spam Draupnir Expedition (700 gate). Each run is only 5–7 minutes and drops Unique gear plus Kina. Keep running it until you cross 1000 gear score.
At 1000, unlock Nightmare and the Abyss. Nightmare is a solo 7-boss challenge (Phantasmal Fragments → Amplify fragments, Clash Rune boxes, Stigma Shards); the Abyss is the big PvPvE zone and your best source of Stigma Shards.
Then just follow the gates upward — Vakron, Transcendence, Horn Den, Sanctuary (table below).

When a dungeon offers a guaranteed reward slot pick, choose the equipment slot you're missing — don't auto-click.

The Six Endgame Gates

All level-45 content uses a gear-score door lock. Here's the full ladder as of October 2026:

Gear Score	Content	What it's for
700	Draupnir Expedition (5-player)	Fast Unique gear + Kina farm; 5–7 min runs
1000	Nightmare (solo, 7 bosses)	Phantasmal Fragments → Amplify fragments, Clash Rune boxes, Stigma Shards, wings
1000	Abyss / Reshanta (PvPvE)	Abyss Points, PvP gear, 200 Stigma Shards in the Abyss shop
1000	Ascension Trial (timed solo; Extreme 2500)	Solo challenge + rewards
1400	Vakron Sky Island Expedition	Next-tier Unique gear
1600	Transcendence (2–5 players)	Your main Arcana card source — big Combat Power gains
2100	Ferocious Horn Den Expedition	High-tier gear; this is roughly where crafted Dragon Lord gear starts mattering
2800	Sanctuary (10-player raid)	Current top of the Season 1 ladder

⚠️ The Draupnir Portal Trap (Read This Before Your First Run)

Right before the final boss, the party moves through a boss portal. If you're out of position, die, get one-shot, or run out of resurrection stones and take a normal revive, you respawn outside the sealed door and cannot get back in. You get zero loot — even if the party kills the boss while you're standing outside.

Two habits save you:

Stay glued to the group and take the portal the moment it opens.
Carry Resurrection Spiritstones. The first couple of bosses allow free revives; later ones consume a stone. Don't burn them all learning early mechanics.

Your First Week: Don't Let Anything Cap Out

Endgame rewards run on daily/weekly limits. When a counter maxes out, any extra you could have earned simply rots. I keep this list taped next to my monitor:

Daily Dungeon: 14 runs per account per week (unlocks at 30). This is your single biggest Enhance Stone income — use all 14 every week.
Nightmare: 2 attempts per day, stores up to 14. Attempts are only consumed when you kill a boss, so wiping on a boss you're learning doesn't waste them — but don't let stored attempts sit at 14.
Abyss: 7 hours per week (resets Wednesday, after the October 14 patch). Don't burn all 7 on Monday.
Weekly dungeon Kina decay: repeat a dungeon too many times and the settlement Kina drops — for Krao Cave it's 100% for runs 1–6, 60% for 7–13, 20% for 14–20, 0% after 21, resetting Wednesday. Spread your farming.
Rifts: a Spacetime Rift opens roughly every 3 hours into the enemy faction's map. At 45, clear Sealed Dungeons and Strongholds on both your map and the enemy's — they're major Enhance Stone sources.

While gearing, also fill the "free" Combat Power: max your core skills with Skill Points/Wisdom Stones, feed Stigma Shards to one core Stigma up to a breakpoint (5/10/15), light up your Daevanion Board toward your most-used skills, and fill all three title effect slots. None of it costs enhancement gold, and it's the difference between a "fake" 1000 score and a real one.

Quick Mistakes to Skip

Maxing one leveling Unique to +10 while the rest sit at +0 — go evenly, and cap transitional pieces at +5.
Ignoring Combat Power and equipping raw high-ilvl junk rolls to cheese a gate — you'll get in and get your party killed.
Sleeping on dailies because "I'll catch up on the weekend" — capped entries don't roll over.
Installing a third-party DPS meter to check your numbers — players have already been banned for these. Use the built-in Ctrl+X Combat Analysis instead.
Touching a Clash Rune above +1 without spare materials. Just don't. (Why it's dangerous.)

That's the whole loop: side-quest Kina → permanent pieces and even +5s → Draupnir to 1000 → Nightmare/Abyss → climb the gates, while never letting a weekly counter sit full. I went from 800 to 1000 in a relaxed weekend, and the ladder only gets faster once you know the route.